HE watched her mangle a leg in a downhill ski accident, but Dancing On Ice star Chemmy Alcott’s boyfriend gets more nervous about the Sunday night skate offs.

HE watched her mangle a leg at 60mph in a downhill ski accident, but Dancing On Ice star Chemmy Alcott’s boyfriend Dougie Crawford gets more nervous about the Sunday night skate offs than her horror injury.

The British number one men’s downhill skier admits watching his other half compete in the weekend ice skating contest gets him more uptight than watching her in international ski events.

Dougie, himself recovering from a broken ankle sustained while training in Austria on Hogmanay, said: “I’m not nervous about her getting injured, I’m just nervous that she’ll make a mistake.

“I get really nervous watching, and really nervous at the skate-off when they reveal who’s going through.

“I always sort of laughed at it on the X Factor, that dramatic pause when they reveal who’s going through.

“But when you have a vested interest, it’s actually truly terrifying. I’m definitely not worried about the injury – I’m more worried that she’ll be disappointed with how she does.”

Dougie says Chemmy, 29, in no way expects to reach the final stages of the show, with stiff competition among the remaining field of 10 celebrities.

“She’s definitely not thinking she can win it,” he said.

“She’s not from a dance background, and plenty of the others are.

“But she’s doing really well, and I love watching her. It’s pretty bizarre meeting folk like Frank Lampard and Christine Bleakley when I’m down for the performances. It’s such a great thing for an athlete to be able to do.”

The 24-year-old, from Bearsden near Glasgow, is talking exclusively to the Record in the bar at Bearsden Ski Club.

He stared skiing at the age of four and having risen to the top of the sport in Britain, he and his top-ranking girlfriend could be thought of as the Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf of British skiing.

The pair met when he was just 18, their paths frequently crossing on the alpine racing tour circuit.

Dougie said: “I was 18 and she basically started flirting with me.

“I didn’t think it was real as she was five years older than me so, to be honest, I didn’t really have her in my league.

“But we ended up getting on well and spent a lot of time together.

“We had a couple of dates. But the first date she was in a wheelchair as she had just had an operation to sort a problem with the bones in her feet.

“I was too young to drive on her car insurance and she wasn’t able to drive, obviously, so her brother drove us around on our first date.” Since then, they’ve grown accustomed to the pattern of spending months apart every year.

He said: “It’s either you see a lot of each other or you don’t at all.

“It can be hard not seeing a lot of each other, but you just kind of get used to it.

“The last couple of years we’ve spent a lot of time together. We’ve both had injuries.”

In 2010, with Chemmy at the top of her game, she suffered the crash which wrecked her next two ski seasons.

Dougie was watching her in the training run at home in Britain, preparing to commentate on the race for Eurosport. He winces to recall the crash on the World Cup downhill run at Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies.

He said “It was horrendous. It wasn’t what I saw – it was what I heard. They showed the clip of her crashing at the start of Dancing On Ice, and her screams make it hard for me to see.

“The crash was nasty and when you slow it down, like they did on TV, it’s horrific. Her leg went in directions it shouldn‘t have.

“But the scream makes me pretty sick. It’s not a scream you could fake. It’s a real guttural scream.

“Then, the next day, I had to commentate in the race she was supposed to be competing in. It just so happened that it was my first job as a commentator for Eurosport. That first weekend was pretty rough. I didn’t sleep much either because Chem would call in the middle of the night in hospital, crying in agony.”

Dougie is all too familiar with the perils of a sport in which downhill skiers can hit 80mph.

He was seriously injured in a fall three years ago and narrowly avoided having to have his spleen removed. He is now recovering from a broken foot.

He said: “I hit a rut, spun out and ended up on a slalom run next door, jarring my ski. It hurt like hell, but I didn’t think it was broken.

“I skied down and got the boot off, but it didn’t get any better. It wasn’t until I got home to Scotland that it was diagnosed as a broken bone.”

Skiing is not a lucrative sport. Dougie relies on sponsors such as airline Canadian Affair, and even does gardening shifts to top up the cash flow. He is supported by his parents, who are both qualified doctors, although his mum gave up medicine to have a family.

He said: “If you get top three and top five at events, you’re making good money, but other than that it’s up to us to find sponsors.”

Failing that, there’s always friends in high places. And Dougie now has a few of those. He said: “Chemmy has the same sponsor as Zara Phillips, and we were invited to their wedding, and the do afterwards at Holyroodhouse.

“So we ended up at Prince Harry’s table for dinner and we hung out with Kate and William too. Harry’s just a young guy who happens to have a crazy life that they didn’t choose.

“I actually have massive respect for them. He and William were both remarkably chilled guys, and it wasn’t ‘Prince Harry’ it was ‘Harry’.

“And I met the Queen too. I saw her coming towards us, so I sort of pushed me and Chemmy into the way to meet her and say hello.

“She recognised Chemmy – they’d met before – and I thanked her for hosting the party. I was a bit in awe, of course I was, but then even the very famous people there were in awe to be at a royal wedding.”